Joey, as much as we say we can’t take too much out of friendlies, a victory over Championship side Stoke must be pleasing for you?
Yeah, a good workout for us to get back to winning and being at the Mem. I spoke to the guys about being away from home or abroad and you’re getting your friendlies but last time we were on the pitch was the Scunthorpe game and momentum had built in the stadium and the feel-good factor.
We said pre-season has finished and this is a game we want to win and we still think we’ve got five or six signings to do. Good signs, really.
The squad is in a good place, the lads are competing hard. We’ve got work to do in the market but young kids are coming in and keeping the standard quite high.
It was a good workout for us. Everyone got minutes, some wanted more minutes, but a good workout.
Starts for Zain Westbrooke and Jordan Rossiter in midfield. Are they both going to be pushing for a starting place for the first game of the season?
I think for us it’s about getting everybody through. Sam Finley and Antony Evans had a little bit of illness, Paul Coutts has got a bit of illness and I think there’s a bit of that flying around the camp at the minute.
It gives other people opportunities and I thought Zain and Jordan did superbly tonight.
Zain has had a tough spell. His time at the club probably hasn’t gone as he would have wanted it, but I think everyone is aware of his qualities and he does have some really good qualities, especially on the ball.
There is stuff off the ball that we’re asking him to work harder at and in pre-season he has done nothing but enhance his claim. He’s been superb, a great attitude, a good lad, trains properly every day and a really good teammate.
I said to him at the start of pre-season ‘Look, it’s a blank slate for everybody’. Some of those lads don’t want to hear that because they had great seasons last year, but for lads who maybe didn’t have the season they wanted, that’s all they can ask for.
I thought tonight he was superb and we are light in that area. It is somewhere I’m looking to strengthen, but when he performs that way certainly gives me food for thought.
Some lovely passing movement, particularly for the second goal for Harvey Saunders. Difficult season for him last season, but hopefully this season he can show fans more of that stuff.
He just had a few injuries at the wrong time. The Bradford game, we were light in the forward area, and he picked up a head and ankle injury in the same challenge.
That set him back and it allowed other people to get momentum. In the January, he wasn’t quite fit and able to force his way into the team and he had to be patient.
We then signed Elliot Anderson and the rest is history. At that point, the guys watched and they couldn’t really knock on my door and demand to be in the team because Azza caught fire and obviously Billy came in and showed everybody what he can do.
He had to be patient, he’s gone away and worked hard in the off-season and he scored a couple of goals at Chippenham, he was a constant threat in the Porto and Swansea games even though he was disappointed he didn’t have a couple of goals in those games.
I thought he showed fantastic desire to get on the end of a fantastic bit of dribbling and a pass from Harry Anderson to slot the ball past the keeper.
He showed composure and calmness, but for me the desire to get there and the willingness to empty his tank and get into the box was really pleasing.
I’m happy with the group. I thought everybody was superb so I’m really pleased.
Joey, obviously fitness is the priority but you want to see chemistry in your group with the new players. The first goal comes from a brilliant move of Antony Evans peeling into that trademark position and opening that crease for James Gibbons to steam into, and he did that brilliantly, didn’t he?
Yeah, and we haven’t worked with the guys so much. We did a couple of sessions based on the way we run our offence in terms of some of the patterns and the triangles, the give-and-goes and how we like to move on the outside.
But we haven’t been really session-heavy on that. There has been a lot of physical fitness work and because we’re still waiting for reinforcements in key areas – we’ve still got Elliot Anderson to replace and Sammy Nicholson to replace, and probably add another forward-thinking player to that – so in pre-season the main focus for us has been defensive structure and defensive shape and we’re progressing through that.
We’re starting to get some of the bedrocks we will use going forward. Obviously, Hooley is playing at right-hand centre-half as opposed to right-back.
I do think it’s his long-term position. If it’s this season, I’m not sure, but I think he will ultimately become a really good centre-back. Whether we use him as a centre-back in a three or a four, I’m not sure yet, but he’s got better through each game.
There were a couple of challenges he made tonight and he’s showing how quick he can retain information. He’s learning all the time and you forget how young they are, two 20-year-old centre-backs.
Really pleased with the group. As I say, we’ve got work to do in the market. We’re 10 days out from the opening day of the season and we’ve had some good challenges in pre-season, some high-level opposition and it’s nice to finish the programme off with a win against a Championship side.
We’re going to have a game here on Saturday in house. I’m not sure how long we’ll play because we’ll have to see what the weather is saying. If it keeps going, it might be a five-minute game.
The season starts next Saturday in our stadium. Great turnout from the crowd tonight for a pre-season friendly. Buzzing to hear the stadium bouncing again, delighted to be back here with a clean sheet and knocking a Championship side off. A good week’s work.
You discussed the centre-back situation. Was there any disappointment in not seeing Connor Taylor tonight?
Yeah, it would have been nice to see him. I’ve got a few at Stoke, Harry Souttar as well but he wasn’t here and Connor wasn’t here.
It would’ve been nice to catch up with them and see them but I did catch up with young D’Margio Wright-Phillips. Shaun had D’Margio when we were YTS (at Manchester City). None of us even had kids or even knew what our reproductive organs were for at the time and Wrighty had a kid.
I did feel my age when I caught up with him out there. It was superb to see him, I remember him being literally a baby. I was delighted to see him, he’s a great kid and he’s obviously had a good start to his career and I wish him well going forward.
Connor, it would have been nice to see him and Harry Souttar but they didn’t travel today.
I presume you are monitoring Connor’s situation because Stoke are openly talking about loaning him again, and if that’s a possibility you will be interested?
He did great here last year and we will forever be grateful to him, but he isn’t our player at the end of the day. You’re in Stoke’s hands on that.
We’d love to have him back because he was a great fit for us and I think he enjoyed his time here and we certainly enjoyed his performances.
If that option is there and Stoke want to loan him out we’d delighted to have him back, bit again he’s not our player and he could play in their first team based on what I’ve seen. They will improve and get better, but Connor was a fantastic player for us.
But as I said, it’s disrespectful for me to talk about their players.
Anything close for you in the transfer market?
No, not that I know of. Things are progressing and moving slowly in the background, but I’m calmer than I normally would be and that’s probably because I’ve got a promotion on my CV.
But this time last year I’d have been clucking and laying eggs eight or nine days out from the season with work to do, but this group this year is totally different. It’s more settled.
We’ve had setbacks with Nick Anderton, Alfie Kilgour and Paul Coutts missing tonight and there are still one or two to come back.
We just need to show a bit of patience in the marketplace to make sure we add real quality to our group because we’ve got a good foundation to build off, but I still think I’m five, six, or seven away from where I want to be, but again that’s if we get everything dropping in because you can make five subs next year.
You see the impact tonight off the bench, with legs and energy coming off the bench and it’s going to be key. Next season we have the opportunity to do that. We want to make sure the players coming on take the performance up so it’s a full 90-minute performance.
You see Eddie Jones talk about it with the rugby with starters. Now we’ve got five subs, people have got to accept there is going to be a finishing role, people who come on to finish a game.
Does that put an extra value on overloading your attacking midfield and wing departments where you’ve got points of difference to bring off the bench?
That’s the marketplace for strikers and why we were so keen to get a number nine done. You’ve seen the difference John Marquis has made for us and he’s still striving for fitness and he’s still 10 days behind the group because he had to go on his honeymoon.
It was cancelled by COVID and he was willing to come back but I don’t think it would have been politically quite smart in the household to bring him back but he was willing to come.
He’s wanting to push on and he was disappointed to come off because he wanted the minutes.
But for us, there was not an awful lot of value in that space at that time in the market. Everybody seems to be looking for forward-thinking players, everyone seems to be looking for strikers and we’ve got some targets identified and we’re moving towards those.
Whether we can pull them off, I’m not sure. We like to keep our business close to our chest, although you do have a weird habit of finding out sometimes.
I don’t like us talking about stuff until we’ve actually done it, so we have got work to do in the marketplace.
I think in the next couple of weeks as teams bed down their squads and who’s going to be in and out, you begin to understand the market a bit better and the market presents different opportunities and we’re relatively mobile in that space.
We tend to have quite good information and hopefully we can recruit some good players for our football team because we’ve already got some and if we add a little more quality we’ve got a good side in our hands again.
Finally, you mentioned Alfie Kilgour had an injury. What is the story with that?
A bit of swelling in his knee.
Is that the same problem as last year?
No, he’s got a bit of swelling and it’s not major, but Aaron Collins smashed him in training the other day. I know that sounds an oxymoron with Aaron Collins lamping Alfie Kilgour. He’s got a bit of pain and we couldn’t risk him.
Joey, we saw James Gibbons and Harry Anderson have a good relationship. It must be good to see they are building a relationship. Could that be your first choice for the season?
We’re not absolutely nailed in on that, but Gibbo, we want to get him in his natural position. He’s played left-back, he’s played for Port Vale as a right-sided centre-back in a three.
We know he’s versatile but we want to put him in his natural position. We want to shift Hooley out of it because he’s got 40-odd games playing right-back and we want to give him a little bit of experience in what I think will be his long-term position and it allows us to get Gibbo in his position and we can relationship build.
Plus, if Hooley is playing centre-half it allows me to teach him the defensive responsibilities that maybe you don’t always learn at full-back.
They’ve been great, the two of them, Beefy and him. You’re asking two young lads to run a line and police a backline and every day is a school day. They are getting it right sometimes; tonight was really good but it’s a work in progress.
I love it. Empty vessels, you get to teach them the game, so it’s really exciting times, but we’ve got a lot of work to do.
Zain has obviously won the league before with Coventry and he knows this league. Is he in your plans for next season?
At this moment in time, yeah, for sure. He’s a player under contract.
It hasn’t gone right for him last year. He went on loan and it didn’t quite work out because (Stevenage) changed from Paul Tisdale to Steve Evans, which is going from night to day.
Definitely two contrasting football views and Westy suffered in that and it just hasn’t gone to plan.
He’s now in a group with a really solid foundation. We all know the qualities Zain brings, he is a very technically proficient footballer but the physicality and the other side of the game are the bits he’s got to develop.
But I thought tonight against Championship-level opposition, I thought he was superb, certainly in the first half. I felt he was up there with our better players.
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